Derek Achong

A trade union has been grant­ed con­di­tion­al leave to pur­sue a fi­nal ap­peal over a de­ci­sion to de­ny a for­mer bank work­er ac­cess to the In­dus­tri­al Court be­cause it (the trade union) did not have a bank ac­count.

Ap­pel­late Judges Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon, Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er and Mal­colm Holdip grant­ed the Sanc­tu­ary Work­ers’ Trade Union and for­mer RBC Roy­al Bank em­ploy­ee Mi­toon­lal Per­sad per­mis­sion to pur­sue an ap­peal be­fore the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Mon­day.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion, and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board (RRCB) ob­ject­ed to the move but were over­ruled by the ap­peal pan­el, which stat­ed that the union and Per­sad had a right of ap­peal un­der the Ju­di­cial Re­view Act.

The union and Per­sad are chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion of three Ap­peal Court Judges, who ruled that High Court Judge Joan Charles got it wrong when she up­held their law­suit in No­vem­ber, last year.

The law­suit cen­tres around Per­sad’s in­ter­est in pur­su­ing a trade dis­pute against his for­mer em­ploy­er over the dis­missal/ter­mi­na­tion of his em­ploy­ment.

In No­vem­ber 2019, the Min­istry of Labour is­sued a cer­tifi­cate of un­re­solved dis­pute and re­ferred the is­sue of whether Per­sad was in good fi­nan­cial stand­ing with the union to the board.

Per­sad and the union sued the board af­ter it ruled that Per­sad was not in good stand­ing be­cause the union did not have a bank ac­count.

In the law­suit, Charles had to de­ter­mine whether the board was al­lowed to in­tro­duce a prac­tice note re­quir­ing a union to have a bank ac­count.

Charles not­ed that Sec­tion 34 (3) of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA), which states that the board should be sat­is­fied that a union fol­lowed sound ac­count­ing prac­tices and the work­er had made union con­tri­bu­tions at least two months be­fore ini­ti­at­ing a trade dis­pute to find that a work­er is in good stand­ing.

In her judg­ment, Charles ruled that the IRA did not give the board the pow­er to cre­ate reg­u­la­tions al­ter­ing the terms of Sec­tion 34.

Charles al­so ruled that the board act­ed un­fair­ly by mak­ing the de­ci­sion with­out giv­ing the Per­sad and the union an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard.

In de­cid­ing the case, the ap­peal pan­el ruled that Jus­tice Charles made er­rors when rul­ing on the ef­fect of the prac­tice note.

The pan­el al­so ruled that the judge’s crit­i­cism of the lack of con­sul­ta­tion with the union af­ter the de­ci­sion was un­found­ed.

Stat­ing that there was no breach of nat­ur­al jus­tice, the pan­el ruled that it was sat­is­fied that the union knew that the lack of a bank ac­count could be con­sid­ered a breach of sound ac­count­ing prac­tices.

The work­er and the union were rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon and Rhea Khan.